CC Jul-Aug 2021

CASEstudy
The small print
Keeping track of construction documents is easier when you look at the details that simplify the
workflow. Viewpoint asked one of its customers to expand on how they managed documents on
their projects
Multiple teams are involved
during the lifecycle of a
construction project. What one
may consider an essential functionality
for a software platform, another team
may never use. That's why it is
important to know what "good"
construction software looks like from the
perspective of different job titles. This
way, you can make an informed
decision in choosing a platform that
ticks the right boxes for employees
across multiple teams.
Document controllers - who must keep
track of project plans, blueprints, vendor
contracts, drawings, and data backup
and security - need software specific to
the construction industry to enforce
consistency and make documents easy
to share between project members.
To see what construction software
features are most important to
document controllers, we talked to
Charlotte Thorburn, document controller
at Sons & Co. Thorburn coordinated her
company's move towards a Common
Data Environment (CDE) to standardise,
simplify and scale up how her company
managed projects. She outlined for us
the six key features that proved most
significant as she helped roll out the
new system at Sons & Co.
Thorburn explained that document
controllers should look for all of these
features: a BIM framework, an
integrated drawing viewer which allowed
markup and revisions and a repeatable,
collaborative workflow. It goes without
saying that it also needs quick search
functionality, and unlimited document
storage - current major projects include
100s of thousands of items. She
explained further:
1. A BIM FRAMEWORK
A good CDE should be BIM-ready to
ensure consistency, quality and
compliance. In order to achieve building
information modeling (BIM) Level 2, a
document controller requires a few
critical features: a consistent approach
across drawings, and consistent naming
conventions, giving users the ability to
ensure that all stakeholders can
collaborate, and to export the
Construction Operations Building
Information Exchange (COBie) data from
these documents.
It may seem simple, but a consistent,
logical naming convention saves time
and increases overall project
organisation. It also allows the team to
combine relevant documents to
construct a federated model.
2. INTEGRATED DRAWINGS
VIEWER
Being able to have linked drawings and
documents at your fingertips can save
significant time and hassle in the field.
Being able to see documents in one
place, rather than having to leave the
system just to see a document in full,
was an essential functionality for
Thorburn and her team.
Navigating in and out of the
system slowed down all users
because it required them to
download documents and take
up space on their computer.
This caused another problem,
because team members would
then rely on their saved
documents, instead of the
updated source material,
which may have added edits
or comments. "When the
drawings were taken offline,"
Thorburn says, "we forfeited
live visibility of a project and
created a break in the project
timeline."
Site drawings (DWGs) often
go on-site earlier than their
corresponding PDFs, so it
was vital that these
documents could be linked
at all times. Document
controllers
need a system
that avoids the
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July/August 2021